At a place where a command is expected, the char # serves as comment. That can be the beginning of a line or immediately after a semicolon (;). A line or bracketed [expression] beginning with # is treated as nothing.
The # differs from the construct if 0 ... such that its following words are not processed as arguments of a true procedure but instead are really ignored.
If you write this:
if 0 [puts a]
then the output is a, followed by the prompt:
a %
RJ Not in my universe:
> if 0 {puts a} >
wdb The difference is: you used curly { braces } -- I used [ brackets ] (which is not propagated as nice programming style).
If you write this:
# [puts a]
then nothing happens:
%
AMG: TIP 148 is relevant. If the first word of a list starts with #, it is now brace-quoted to ensure that if the list is passed to [eval], it is treated as a command rather than a comment.
See also: if 0 {